Diplomatic efforts to end the largely deadlocked war in Ukraine have focused on Western guarantees of Ukraine’s future security. But the Kremlin says it must obtain its own “security guarantees” before laying down arms.
What President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia says is protection, however, would drastically limit Ukraine’s sovereignty, leaving it vulnerable to a renewed Russian attack and, many of its supporters believe, effectively turning it into a client state of Moscow. That tension over “security guarantees” — and the different ways in which the term is interpreted by the Kremlin and by the West — underlines the fundamental challenge of forging any peace deal to end Russia’s invasion.
What Mr. Putin says are Russia’s rightful national security demands have been consistent for years. They reflect a list of grievances that he refers to in shorthand as “the root causes” of the war.
Under President Trump, Russia’s concerns are finally “being heard” in Washington, Mr. Putin says. “We can see now that some mutual understanding is taking shape,” Mr. Putin said at a summit in China this week, referring to his meeting with Mr. Trump in Alaska last month.
But many supporters of Ukraine believe that Mr. Putin’s frequently voiced concerns about NATO reflect his desire to subsume Ukraine and resurrect the Soviet Union.
Here’s what Russian officials mean when they talk about security guarantees and how that compares with the Ukrainian position.
NATO’s growth is a longtime Kremlin worry.
Russia’s most oft-cited demand for ending the war is a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO.
The eastward expansion of the U.S.-led military alliance after the collapse of the Soviet Union has shaped Mr. Putin’s revanchist worldview more than any other trend, his statements suggest, contributing directly to his decision to invade Ukraine.
For years, Mr. Putin has repeatedly stated a common Russian belief that when NATO admitted former Soviet republics and satellites into the alliance in the 1990s and early 2000s, the United States broke promises it had given to the last Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, that it would not do so.
No binding limits on NATO expansion have ever existed. But Mr. Putin has made avenging the supposed humiliation inflicted by the West on Russia after it had been weakened by the end of the Soviet Union a cornerstone of his foreign policy.
Since the start of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Mr. Putin has continued to frame it, among other things, as a struggle against NATO’s expansion. He said this week that Russia would accept Ukraine’s admittance into the European Union, but reiterated that it would never tolerate Ukraine inside NATO.
“We have always been against Ukraine becoming a member of the North Atlantic alliance,” he told journalists in China on Wednesday. “Security of one country cannot come at the expense of security of another country, in this case the Russian Federation.”
Workarounds on NATO expansion are tricky.
Mr. Trump has said that NATO will not admit Ukraine. Analysts believe that the Kremlin wants that in writing, or a change in Ukraine’s Constitution that enshrines its “neutral” status. Both NATO and Ukraine, however, have ruled out any binding limitations to their security policies.
Ukraine’s Western allies are working on a potential solution to the deadlock. They are discussing a deal that would substitute NATO’s mutual-defense pact with bilateral agreements that would oblige Ukraine’s allies to come to its defense in case of aggression. To make such a deterrent credible, France and Britain are leading efforts to create a coalition of countries that would potentially station troops in Ukraine.
But Russia says it categorically opposes the presence of troops from NATO countries in Ukraine. The Kremlin has also demanded to be part of any international security guarantees provided to Kyiv, which analysts have equated with the fox guarding the henhouse.
Efforts by officials in the United States and Europe to craft a security deal for Ukraine without considering the Kremlin’s position make them unlikely to succeed, said Samuel Charap, a Russia expert at RAND Corporation, a security research organization in Washington.
“In a way, it’s putting the cart before the horse,” he said. “If either side presents the other with security guarantees as a fait accompli, it is unlikely to lead to a negotiated outcome.”
Russia wants a smaller Ukrainian Army.
Another major disagreement in the peace talks relates to Ukraine’s postwar military potential. Ukraine is rapidly developing its domestic weapons industry and pursuing a multibillion-dollar arms buildup. The Ukrainian government hopes these policies will allow the country to defend itself even if international security guarantees do not materialize.
Kyiv’s aggressive rearmament program, however, goes squarely against what Russia sees as its security interests.
One of Russia’s conditions, which was stated in low-level peace talks in Istanbul in June, is a cap on the size of the Ukrainian military and limits on the amount and types of weapons it has. Russia has framed this demand as a guarantee that the Ukrainian military would be unable to conduct offensive operations, in effect preventing it from trying to reclaim occupied territory.
Ukraine has said such restrictions would amount to capitulation and leave the country exposed to future invasions.
“Russia’s ideal scenario is that Ukraine is left defenseless and subjugated,” Mr. Charap said. “In a successful negotiated outcome, both sides would be capable of defending what they have without being able to threaten the other.”
Anton Troianovski contributed reporting from Berlin, and Constant Méheut from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Anatoly Kurmanaev covers Russia and its transformation following the invasion of Ukraine.
The post Russia Wants ‘Security Guarantees’ Too. Here’s What They Look Like. appeared first on New York Times.
